This New York Times bestseller of a troubled family in 1960s Vermont
is "teeming with incident and characters, often foolish, even nasty, but
always alive" (The New Yorker).
It is the summer of 1960 in Atkinson, Vermont. With no help from her
alcoholic ex-husband, Marie Fermoyle is raising three children on the
edge of poverty. Her seventeen-year-old daughter, Alice, is becoming
emotionally involved with a local priest in a staunchly Catholic town
that disapproves of Marie's divorce. Alice's brother Norm is a hotheaded
sixteen-year-old, and twelve-year-old Benjy is isolated and full of
anxieties, looking with yearning at the Klubocks next door, who seem to
live an orderly, peaceful life much unlike his own family's.
Now, Marie has met a new man: Omar Duvall, who talks about opportunities
and riches but so far seems only to sponge off the Fermoyles. A lonely,
desperate single mother like Marie is easy prey for con men, but she
resists the temptation to doubt him. Young Benjy, though, may eventually
reveal a disturbing secret that could shatter all her hopes.
A portrait of a family as well as a town and its secrets, Songs in
Ordinary Time is "a gritty, beautifully crafted novel rich in wisdom
and suspense" (The Miami Herald). An Oprah's Book Club selection from
an author nominated for the National Book Award and the PEN/Faulkner
Award, it is "extraordinary . . . a deeply satisfying story" (USA
Today).
